Indonesian police fired tear gas and water cannon to disperse hundreds of demonstrators who massed outside the US Embassy in Jakarta, capital of the most populous Muslim nation.
In Kabul, protesters set fire to cars and shops and threw stones at police.
“We will defend our prophet until we have blood across our bodies. We will not let anyone insult him,” said one protester in the Afghan capital. “Americans will pay for their dishonour.”
Thousands also marched in Beirut, where a Hezbollah leader accused US spy agencies of being behind events that have unleashed a wave of anti-Western sentiment in the Muslim and Arab world.
The demonstrations were the latest across the world ignited by a short film made with private funds in the United States and posted on the Internet that insults the Prophet Mohammad (PBUH).
The situation saddles US President Barack Obama with an unexpected foreign policy headache as he campaigns for re-election in November, even though his administration has condemned the film as reprehensible and disgusting.
In a torrent of violence last week, the US ambassador to Libya and three other Americans were killed in an attack in Benghazi and US and other foreign embassies were stormed in cities in Asia, Africa and the Middle East by furious Muslims. At least nine other people have been killed.
Washington has sent ships, extra troops and special forces to protect US interests and citizens in the Middle East, while a number of its embassies have evacuated staff and are on high alert for trouble.
A White House spokesman said Obama spoke by telephone to senior diplomats at the weekend to reassure them of his support.
“He called the chiefs of mission in Sudan, Tunisia, Libya and Yemen to let those diplomats know that he was thinking about them, that their safety remains a top priority of his, and it is something he will remain focused on,” spokesman Josh Earnest said.
Despite Obama’s efforts early in his tenure to improve relations with the Arab and Muslim world, the new violence adds to a host of problems including the continued US military involvement in Afghanistan, Iran’s nuclear programme, the Syrian civil war and the fall-out from the Arab Spring revolts.
Hopes
The renewed protests on Monday dashed any hopes that the furore over the film might fade despite an appeal over the weekend from the senior cleric in Saudi Arabia, home to Islam’s holiest shrines, for calm.
In the Kabul demonstration, protesters shouted “Death to America” and burned the flags of the United States and of Israel, a country reviled by many Muslims and Arabs because of the Palestinian issue.
The US, British and other missions were placed on lockdown and violence flared near housing compounds for foreign workers.
In Pakistan, thousands of students burned US flags and chanted anti-American slogans in the northwest city of Peshawar, where Osama bin Laden kept a home during the 1980s jihad against Soviet troops in adjacent Afghanistan.
In the nearby district of Upper Dir, next to to a former Taleban stronghold crushed in 2009, two protesters were killed and two others wounded in a shootout with police.
The crowd of about 800 people set fire to a magistrate’s house and the local press club. In Karachi, Pakistan’s biggest city, another demonstrator died after being shot in the head during clashes with police near the US consulate on Sunday.
Around 500 angry protesters in the eastern Pakistani city of Lahore tried to reach the US consulate but were driven back by police with tear gas.
Pakistani Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf ordered the blocking of YouTube in the country so that the “blasphemous” film could not be viewed, the information ministry said.
His US-backed government faces a Taleban insurgency supported by al-Qaeda and other militant groups but anti-US feeling is never far from the surface.
In Beirut, Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah made a rare public appearance to address tens of thousands of Lebanese protesting against the film.
“Prophet of God, we offer ourselves, our blood and our kin for the sake of your dignity and honour,” said Nasrallah, who has lived in hiding to avoid assassination since the Shiite Muslim militant movement fought a war with Israel in 2006.
Thousands marched through Beirut’s Shiite southern suburbs shouting “Death to America, Death to Israel” and “America, hear us – don’t insult our Prophet.”
On television earlier, Nasrallah said the United States must be held accountable and that US intelligence agencies were orchestrating events.
In Tunisia, a Salafist leader escaped from a mosque that had been surrounded by security forces seeking to arrest him over clashes at the US Embassy last week, a Reuters witness said.
Saif-Allah Benahssine, leader of the Tunisian branch of the hardline Islamist Ansar al-Sharia, slipped away after hundreds of his followers stormed out of al-Fatah mosque in Tunis.
Benahssine told his supporters earlier he was not involved in the protests, in which two people were killed when police opened fire as protesters ransacked the US mission.
Also on Monday police in Azerbaijan arrested about 15 people who tried to protest outside the US Embassy in Baku.
Rallies had taken place as far afield as Britain and Australia at the weekend, showing the global scale of the outrage at the Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) film.
Pursue
In other developments, Iran condemned the film as offensive and vowed to pursue those responsible for making it.
“Certainly it will search for, track, and pursue this guilty person who has insulted 1.5 billion Muslims in the world,” First Vice-President Mohammad Reza Rahimi told a cabinet meeting.
Iranian officials have demanded the United States apologise to Muslims for the film, saying it is only the latest in a series of Western insults aimed at Islam’s holy figures.
The identity of those directly responsible for it remains unclear. Clips posted online since July have been attributed to a man named Sam Bacile, which two people connected with the film have said was probably an alias.
Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, 55, a Coptic Christian widely linked to the film in media reports, was questioned in California on Saturday by US authorities investigating possible violations of his probation for a bank fraud conviction.
Cabinet
The Kuwaiti Cabinet, in its weekly meeting at Seif Palace on Monday, discussed the controversial movie which has sparked wide-scale protests across the Muslim world.
The Cabinet strongly condemned the movie, which is deemed offensive and hurt the feelings of hundreds of millions of Muslims worldwide. “This movie, which mocks Prophet Mohammad (PBUH), is a malicious move to spread hatred and instigate tension among the followers of different faiths,” the Cabinet was quoted as saying.
The Cabinet, however, strongly denounced the uncivilized way some people have been protesting against the movie, especially those who attacked the US diplomats and diplomatic mission in several countries.
Assistant Undersecretary for Criminal Security Major-General Abdul Hameed Al-Awadhi was recently quoted as saying the State Security police have handed over two European juveniles to the Criminal Investigation Department for demonstrating in front of the US Embassy in Kuwait, reports Al-Rai daily.
The two are identified as 16-year-old Canadian of Pakistani origin and a 17-year-old Australian. They were seen last Friday evening in front of the US Embassy. The juveniles are living in Kuwait with their families.
According to preliminary investigations the two young ‘men’ have admitted to taking part in the protest and attempting to incite the demonstrators.
They also said they took part in the demonstration to vent their anger at the film offending the Holy Prophet (PBUH).
Al-Awadhi added the juveniles face deportation.
Evacuated
Around 100 US citizens have been evacuated from Tunisia since an attack on the embassy in Tunis by angry Muslim protesters that left four people dead, several sources said on Monday.
“The American nationals were evacuated on Sunday,” a diplomatic source told AFP, without saying how many had left the country.
A security source said 100 Americans, including embassy officials and residents, left the capital on a Tunisair flight.
Washington ordered non-essential diplomatic staff and their relatives to leave Sudan and Tunisia following violent anti-American protests at the US missions there that killed six people in total.
Track down
Iran’s government will “track down” those responsible for making an amateurish film clip mocking the Prophet Mohammad, a senior official said, Iranian media reported on Monday.
“The government of the Islamic Republic of Iran condemns … this inappropriate and offensive action,” First Vice-President Mohammad Reza Rahimi said, according to the Mehr news agency.
“Certainly it will search for, track, and pursue this guilty person who … has insulted 1.5 billion Muslims in the world.”
The Islamic Republic’s founder, Ayatollah Khomeini, condemned to death the Indian-born British novelist Salman Rushdie in 1989 for his novel “The Satanic Verses,” saying its depiction of the Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) was blasphemous.
Iranian officials have demanded that the United States apologise to Muslims for the movie, saying it is only the latest in a series of Western insults aimed at Islam’s holy figures.
Rahimi did not give details on how Iran would pursue the makers of the film in his remarks, which the Iranian Students’ News Agency said he had made at a cabinet meeting on Sunday.
Rescue
An amateur video appears to show Libyans trying to rescue US ambassador Christopher Stevens from a room filled with smoke at the US mission where he was found unconscious after last week’s attack by a mob.
The video, which appeared on the Internet and a copy of which was obtained by Reuters in Benghazi, confirms reports that suggested the US envoy died of asphyxiation after the building caught fire.
The footage also sheds new light on the circumstances of the ambassador’s death, apparently showing for the first time that some of the people who forced their way into the US compound later tried to rescue Stevens after they found him lying alone, with no security detail, in one of the rooms in the building.
The video shows a group of young men who had earlier stormed the compound telling other protesters by the light of torches and mobile phones that they had found someone who appeared to be a foreigner lying on the floor.
“There is someone inside … He is a foreigner, he is a foreigner. Take him out,” said one man, shouting for help.
“Bring him out, man! Bring him out,” another said.
“The man is alive. Bring him out, man. Bring him out,” said a third.
“Alive, Alive! God is Greatest,” the crowd cried. Someone called for a car.
“Make space, is there someone who is a medic around? Anyone who can get a car quickly?” another man can be heard saying.
Stevens and three other embassy staff died when gunmen attacked the US consulate and a safe house in the eastern Libyan city on Tuesday night. The attackers were part of a crowd blaming America for a film they said insulted the Prophet Mohammad (PBUH).
Security personnel were separated from Stevens during the attack, US officials said, in the chaos of smoke and gunfire that ensued.
